The course of Great American II, the 53-foot trimaran sailing from Hong Kong to New York to challenge a 154-year-old passage record, has mirrored that of her nemesis Sea Witch this week.

Although Sea Witch sailed this passage well over a century ago, the wake of the clipper ship is very present to modern adventurers Rich Wilson (Rockport, Mass.) and Rich du Moulin(Larchmont, N.Y.) on Great American II.

"GAII and Sea Witch have been winding through each others' wakes thepast two weeks," said crewmember du Moulin. "Imagine if we were here at the same time: we probably would have sighted each other. It's a real race to the Cape!"

The path these two vessels have cut across the Indian Ocean is the only thing they have in common: 32 days out of Hong Kong, Great American II is reporting sea conditions unlike anything Sea Witch had encountered thus far. For much of the week, GAII has been sailing in large, confused seas-and this boat and her crew have been getting thrashed.

"How can a boat survive such a beating?" queried Wilson in a satellite email. "GAII is all heart and incredible strength, but even she must have a limit. The forces that have been exerted on her since Saturday are overwhelming. Waves that shock the pontoon, that then shocks the rig: you wonder how could it possibly be still standing? How could that pontoon not have caved in yet?"

In stark contrast, in Sea Witch's logs of January 1849, Captain Robert "Bully" Waterman recounted a string of pleasant days at this point in the journey, with lighter winds and clear weather.

The trimaran's course is north of the clipper ship's, but both vessels are neck-and-neck. The logged positions for day 32 are approximately equidistant from the Cape of Good Hope.

This week's reports from the GAII crew don't focus as much on the horse race taking place over the span of thousands of ocean miles: Wilson and du Moulin are pushing as hard as they dare, trying to preserve their boat, and reporting on the rigors of daily life inside what Wilson has dubbed "a washing machine." GAII has had a Global Positioning System (GPS) failure, so they switched to the backup GPS antenna and were able to calculate their position. But every time a wave hits, the jarring motion causes them to lose their position.

"Of course, if you had a new stereo system, and every 60 seconds or so, hit the shelf it was on from the underside with a sledgehammer to make it jump off the shelf, after a while you wouldn't expect it to work," explains Wilson. "That is exactly what we have here. The GPS transceiver is next to my bunk. When these waves hit the underside of the cross beam, it lifts me right off the bunk, and it hurts: make no mistake, it hurts. So how could electronics possibly survive?"

Even provisions are not safe from the conditions. When he went to get a snack, Skipper Rich Wilson found one inch of water in their snack bin; then found soup and oatmeal in four inches of water in another bin. Wilson went on deck to learn that water was forcing its way through the sealed port-side solar panel cable hole that comes in through the side of the boat. "Every wave that was crashing tons of water into that side of the boat was forcing a drop through there," he said. The drops accumulated until some provisions and pots and pans were swimming in seawater.

The crew on GAII did not expect to find these sea conditions so soon in their passage. The size of the waves--reported from 10 to 18 feet, with some waves swelling to 25 feet with crests--is not the sole problem: it is the waves' confused patterns. Earlier in the week, Wilson reported seas that seemed to arise out of nowhere and descend on the boat.

But the crew's concern is not just focused on the present tumult onboard: they are wondering what lies ahead. "It is known that off the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agulhas that the appalling seas can break ships in half," reported Wilson earlier this week. "We are 1300 miles from there, but from our satellite imagery, we know that we are in an eddy of current that must be contributing to this confusion. If this is what it is like off Madagascar, what can it be possibly like off the Cape if we get the wrong weather?"

GAII's next waypoint is the Cape of Good Hope, where she'll turn north into the Atlantic Ocean and head for the finish line at New York's Statue of Liberty.

Tom Burton (AUS) and Alison Young (GBR) hit the right note in the Laser and Laser Radial at ISAF Sailing World Cup Melbourne as they took out the top honours and qualification spots to the 2015 ISAF Sailing World Cup Final.

It was double Australian gold in the Paralympic classes. Matt Bugg (AUS) came out on top in the 2.4mR whilst London 2012 Paralympic SKUD18 gold medallists Dan Fitzgibbon and Liesl Tesch (AUS) were triumphant in the two person keelboat.

Lithuania's Juozas Bernotas came out on top in the Men's RS:X whilst Russia's Stefania Elfutina was triumphant in the Women's RS:X. Both sailors claim the first Abu Dhabi ISAF Sailing World Cup Final spots whilst Jock Calvert (AUS) and Joanna Sterling (AUS) picked up the Oceanic spots for the Emirati finale.

There was some fast paced action in the 49er and 49erFX Medal Races at ISAF Sailing World Cup Melbourne as Nathan Outteridge & Iain Jensen (AUS) and Maia & Ragna Agerup (NOR) claimed the honours and Abu Dhabi final spots.

A tight group of five young Papua New Guinean (PNG) Laser sailors are stepping up their 2015 Pacific Games competition program using this week's ISAF Sailing World Cup Melbourne. PNG is one of 33 countries represented at the important Oceanic event, the largest Olympic sailing regatta in the southern hemisphere.

Melbourne, Australia will host the final Rio 2016 Paralympic Games qualification regatta in 2015. With just under one year until the event, the 2015 IFDS Worlds was launched at ISAF Sailing World Cup Melbourne.

ISAF Sailing World Cup Melbourne kick starts the journey to the 2015 ISAF Sailing World Cup Final in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates with qualification spots and top ranking points available in the Australian city.

Four boats in the Volvo Ocean Race celebrated rounding the venerated landmark of Cape Horn on Monday, a pleasure cruelly denied Dongfeng Race Team (Charles Caudrelier/FRA) after the Chinese boat's mast was broken early in a dramatic day on Leg 5.

The wind played dirty tricks all day in Palma on the sailors and race committees who had to juggle with big shifts and different pressure. From 4 to 20 knots, and reaching 40 in some gusts, the wind turned around the bay playing with everybody's nerves.

Ghosting across the line in the inky blackness of a Mediterranean spring night, finally slicing through the finish line set on the very waters where some 40 odd years ago he cut his teeth as a young, aspiring sailor harbouring great dreams, at 01:47:00hrs local time Guillermo Altadill and his talented, ever reliable Chilean co-skipper Jose Muñoz secured second placed in this third edition of the Barcelona World Race, the round the world race for two crew which left the Catalan capital on December 31st 2014.

Algoa Bay brought lighter conditions on Sunday, and after a postponement waiting for the wind to settle, the race got underway in 7 knots of breeze from the south-east. Ted Conrads and Brian Haines from the USA were the pathfinders, and opened up the gate for the fleet as they sailed out to the right-hand side of the course.